Vikings Players Finally Lose Starcaps Case

With the NFL draft starting today and team facilities opening tomorrow, there’s another piece of important NFL news that might get lost in the shuffle: The league is declaring victory in the case of the players who sued after they were suspended for taking a banned substance in the over-the-counter substance StarCaps.

“The Minnesota Supreme Court has just issued this morning an order denying a review of the appeals court decision that went in favor of the league,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said today on PFT Live. “The result is the case is over and we, the NFL, prevailed in the case. So there is a court in Minnesota that rules in our favor from time to time.”

Presumably, that means Pat Williams, Kevin Williams and Will Smith will all be suspended for the first four games of the 2011 NFL season.

The case arose from several players testing positive in 2008 for bumetanide, a banned diuretic that had been added to the weight-loss supplement StarCaps — but that wasn’t a listed ingredient. The players argued that it wasn’t fair for the NFL to suspend them when they didn’t know they were taking the substance, but now the courts have said the NFL was right.

And just a reminder....the Williams never tested positive for steroids. Neither the test before, at and after the test revealed steroids. They used starcaps to lose weight for weight loss clauses in their contracts.